The site also can attract more viewers than similar comedy sites such as RooftopComedy.com and Black201, which feature the work of professional producers and comedians but lack a well-known celebrity, Chang said.
"You need an established audience to kick-start the community," he said.
Wayans said he was more involved than celebrities who merely contributed a few videos to a site or invested some of their own money but left the video creation to others. He expects WayOutTV to help find talented comedians and train them to write and produce their own vehicles. The goal is to sell that work to Hollywood.
"I'm there, overseeing this, working with the talent, nurturing them," Wayans said.
He wants to help the talented comedians who haven't yet "made it" produce professional-quality videos for a fraction of the cost it would take to create something for TV.
Cashing in on Web advertising is much tougher, at least for now, analysts said. For one, it's difficult to keep viewers coming back to an entertainment site no matter how funny it is, said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. Most people watch videos online because someone has sent them a link, he said, not because they're browsing the many comedy sites out there.
And advertisers aren't shelling out the kinds of big bucks for a Web video that they do for hit TV shows. McQuivey estimates that even Ferrell's most popular online video, "The Landlord," which got several million hits on Funnyordie.com, made the site tens of thousands of dollars at most (the company won't say).
The sites are effective in allowing artists to act on their creative impulses and share that work with fans, "but as a money-making enterprise, these sites just don't work," McQuivey said.
That doesn't mean we won't see a lot more of them as investors swayed by the power of Hollywood bless the sites with venture money.
At a recent technology networking event in Los Angeles, Wayans showed off clips from the site on his laptop while surrounded by venture capitalists, publicists and others who might be in a position to help him.
"You come up with a new business plan, they say, 'I've seen this before; you're never going to make it,' " McQuivey said. "You show up with some celebrity cachet and suddenly everything changes."
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alana.semuels@latimes.com
